An ideal read for history buffs and space race enthusiasts.
British novelist Johncock's debut takes place on American soil—and in American airspace—at the peak of the space race, from 1947 to 1968.
Fictional Air Force test pilot Jim Harrison works in Muroc, California, at the future Edwards Air Force Base. He and his wife, Grace, struggle to accept infertility; are thrilled by a surprise pregnancy and parenthood; and drift away from each other after a tragic loss. Grace, who's grown accustomed to being alone as a pilot's wife, needs more from her husband after the death of their daughter. Instead, Harrison throws himself into his role as a member of the New Nine—the second class of astronauts and, more importantly, the first that will fly manned missions into space. Harrison's career leads him to interactions with real-life characters Gus Grissom, Jim Lovell, and Pancho Barnes. The novel moves quickly as a result of minimalist, quotation-mark–free dialogue. At times, multiple characters named Grace and Jim cause confusion—an awkward choice on the writer's part. Johncock's extensive research, as evidenced by his long list of book and film sources, is a double-edged sword. The novel gains significant life from Pancho Barnes, the kind of character who can't be invented, and Johncock's mastery of the jargon and mechanics of test piloting and space flight is impressive. However, the flight process and lingo can diminish focus on the characters. The space race is as much a character here as the Harrisons and their social circle, so much so that the people are sometimes overpowered by the mechanics. The book ends with things as they should be between Grace and Jim, but their happy ending is overshadowed by other astronauts' achievements.
An ideal read for history buffs and space race enthusiasts.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06664-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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